23 January 2012 10:44 AM

The poverty of the argument against the IDS welfare reform

The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith was really terrific on the BBC’s Today programme this morning – calm and persistent and, despite interruptions so bad it was impossible at times to hear what was being said at all, managing to get his point across and convey his essential decency and reasonableness.

Which is more than can be said for his opponents. His signature welfare reform was derailed in the House of Lords this evening, representing a triumph of twisted leftism over social justice, sentimentality over reason and posturing ideology over true compassion.

The proposal at the eye of this particular storm is to set a cap of £26,000 per year as the amount that a family can receive in welfare benefits.

The principle is one that is so overwhelmingly reasonable, fair and obvious that even the LibDem leader Nick Clegg and the Independent support it. This principle is that people shouldn’t be able to receive from welfare benefits more than they would if they actually went out and worked and earned £35,000 (before tax). To receive more, as in some circumstances now happens, is to create a pernicious poverty trap in which people find themselves effectively financially punished for working and so stay on welfare. This sucks them into a dependency culture, robs them of incentive or hope and traps their families in a catastrophic cycle of poverty. It is also utterly unjust to the working poor, whose efforts to support themselves are thus rewarded with a financial slap in the face.

Yet its opponents, led by Church of England bishops and knee-jerk LibDem peers led by the preposterous Lord Ashdown (with the Labour party displaying its habitual clear-sighted principle by opposing it while supporting it) are issuing blood-chilling predictions that thousands of children will be plunged into poverty by the ‘loss of child benefit’ and families heartlessly turfed out onto the streets.

Huh? As IDS said once again this morning, this is tantamount to saying that households bringing in £26,000 are unable to make ends meet – clearly ridiculous, since this figure is actually above the average annual household income. And why aren’t the bishops and the LibDems parading their consciences about the plight of the working poor who are sometimes forced to get by on less than those on benefits?

That discrepancy is unjust, immoral and a strong disincentive to work – the only­ way out of poverty. That’s why the IDS reform is supported by three-quarters of the general public – with around a third of them believing that the cap should be set lower, at £20,000 per year. The bishops, LibDems and Labour peers who oppose this measure are by contrast endorsing injustice and condemning people to unemployment and poverty.

The Church of England has achieved the signal feat of putting itself at the very head of this stampede away from justice and morality. Last year, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, raised his banner on this most warped of moral low-grounds when he claimed that no-one had voted for the Government’s welfare policies and accused ministers of encouraging a ‘quiet resurgence of the seductive language of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor.

The notion that poor people cannot be ‘undeserving’ simply because they are poor exposes the amorality at the core of the church’s position. It means that it draws no distinction between poor people who are honest and poor people who are dishonest; or between poor people who choose to work and poor people who choose to be idle. It draws no distinction simply because they are poor.

Yet moral choices are a key feature of being human. By its opposition to the IDS reforms, the church is showing once again that its treats the poor as if they were less than human – as an entire class apart. It reserves moral expectations solely for the better-off. And once again, it reveals the absolute fetish it has made out of poverty. Far from wanting people to escape from poverty through working, it is content they should remain trapped within it. Because for the church, which constantly attacks the ‘undeserving rich’, the poor by contrast are always deserving – deserving, it would appear, always to remain poor. Because poverty is spiritually noble, it seems, while wealth is obscene.

The opponents of the IDS reforms have today demonstrated that infantile leftism still has its thumbs upon the British windpipe – thus continuing to squeeze the life out of British society, along with the church it has managed to all but destroy.

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as one of the poor people!
I'm unable to work*
due to a brain-heamorrhage,
in 1990*
I read with delight that IDS*
is standing up for welfare,
I am poor not by choice!
but the NHS* safety-net,
keeps the wolf from the door!
God-bless you IDS& the Bishop's!
Richard*
Wiltshire*

I agree with the decision made by IDS to cap benefits and agree that there is a lot of dishonesty that needs to be dealt with. I also agree that by enabling people to be far better of on benefits than in paid work devalues the work wthic in some way. However I strongly disagree that everyone who makes the choice to stay on benefits instead of working is necessarily workshy and dishonest. I also think it rather simplistic to think that the 'poverty trap' will be abolished by the capping of benefits alone. A friend of mine with a son in the Navy wanted to take a paid job but couldn't afford the rent of her poky one bed flat. She faced the choice of finding a flat in an area with high crime rate and disruptive neighbours or benefits. She chose benefits. The point I'm making is that cost of living in comparison with non professional wages is extremely high. If the government wants to value work then value all workers even those on the lower end of the scale and do something about private landlords who charge extortionate rents. Some of them aren't exactly honest either. I am a single mum with 2 children. I chose to work part time and in a non professional post so I could devote more time to raising my children. Without benefits in the form of tax credits and child benefit I would struggle severely. Even if I were to work full time I would lose out by at least £5k per annum. Currently I do not consider myself poor and I'm on a lot less even with benefits than the £26k ceiling, Neither do I consider myself work shy or dishonest.

As a practicing Anglican Christian I am appalled at the behaviour of the bishops. they cannot have read the Bible where we read in the book of Proverbs particularly that poverty is a just reward for laziness (of course that does not cover all situations but is, like the Proverbs in general, a sound rule) just as success is ordinarily a reward for hard work and thrift.

The Apostle Paul wrote against idleness, commended hard work and wrote that 'he who will not work should also not eat'. These bishops are not speaking for the Judaeo-Christian tradition, Scripture of the great mass of Christians in this country, Ian Duncan Smith has got it right. By their Marxism the bishops are building the case for disestablishment.

There is a great deal in the Bible about the obligation to aid widows and orphans, strangers, the disabled and the helpless. Nothing at all about punishing hard work in order to reward idleness, quite the reverse.

I saw Melanie Phillips talking about this on QuestionTime the other night. No one should expect her to have any consistency in her views. She's always banging on about how this country is going to the dogs because of a move away from Judaeo-Christian values. However, she means her values. When she disagrees with the bishops, for example, they are on the 'most warped of moral low grounds'. Surely the bishops know as much about Judeao-Christian values as she does, or more possibly?

I really don't understand when the Council give expensive luxurious flats to people who never work one day in their lives, they give flats to families who have 11 children in central London places like Clerkenwell, Bloomsbury or South Kensington, and average 2 bedroom flat in this areas can cost £1500 to £2000 per month but the hard working citizens like Teachers, Nurses, Librarians and Police officers can't afford to rent a flat in the capital, I think the last government used to spend the tax payers money in the wrong places so it is good this government is trying to reform and reinvent the sytem so the country wouldn't have financial pressures in the future.

The SAD thing is Melanie is that the opponents live in seriously middle class neighbourhoods (as do I). They never actually see. the totally devious machinations of the permanently "benefit claiming" classes.
I live in a small village. If what I see and hear daily is representative then we likely have 10% + who believe that taxpayers must provide for them to watch daytime TV on their 42" plasma (which I can't afford!).
In my village shop I actually hear the swapping of tips to get the best from the welfare state - "I think he may have autism.....". "I'll have another kid when the youngest is 7" - and so on and so on. These people use what intelligence they have to STEAL from everyone else, IF they get it right, and most do, then they can exist from 16-50 without ever having to work. Some even manage "free" cars.
Time for change and I think IDS is being too lenient.

Biblical texts do not, in fact, denounce money. It is the LOVE of money which is the root of all evil. The love of the material, not the material in and of itself. The moneychangers in the Temple were a good example of those so in love with money that they were happy to trade in what should have been a place of Holiness. Note Jesus had no truck with traders elsewhere, and indeed was a tradesman himself until his Mission began. Elsewhere in the Bible there are many good and evil characters, but wealth alone is not a determiner when it comes to which side of right those characters fall to. There are good wealthy people, like Moses and Abraham, Joseph, the Roman Centurion at the cross - and evil wealthy people, like Ananias & Sapphira. There are also good and evil amongst the poor. The bible teaches prudence and wise use of money, and most relevant to this topic the bible continually extols the ethic of work throughout its books.

Jesus Christ was not a friend of the wealth creators.In the only instance where he used violence he scourged the money changers who were only trying to make a living out of the Temple.This account is in all four gospels.He described them as thieves.Likewise there is his famous statement that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.It is interesting that those who crticise the Church of England's stance on capitalism would not dream of commentating on Islamic doctrines on usury.Throughout most of its history the Christian Church was opposed to usury. Religion and Politics always make uncomfortable bedfellows.If the Tories dislike the Bishops stance they could consider disestablishing the Church of England.This would put them in the same corner as such as Richard Dawkins,A C Grayling and Philip Pullman.I cannot see Cameron lining up with the militant atheists.

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